THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS.
(TO THE EDITOR OF TUB "SPECTATOR.') SIR,—The question whether the art of teaching can be taught, and whether it is possible to provide anything worth calling a " training " for teachers of schools above the elementary, has been of
late attracting attention, and has received notice in your columns. Will you allow me, as the chairman of Mrs. Grey's newly-formed Society for the Training and Registration of Teachers, to say a" few words on the subject?
The prejudice against the attempt to train our higher class of
teachers is deeply rooted, not only in the ordinary public-school man, but in many men of more than ordinary culture and ability. "Do you want to degrade the teachers of our public schools to the level of certificated masters?" is the question continually put to me ; and the mere mention of a " certificated " teacher seems to many minds to settle the question. It is assumed, first, that all certificated teachers are narrow and mechanical ; and secondly, that they are made so by the process by which they obtain their- certificates,—that is, by their training, and by their successfully passing the usual tests. Thirdly, it is assumed that we intend to give to the teachers of our higher schools the same training and the same testa as are in use among the teachers of elementary schools.
None of these assumptions are true. In the first place, certifi-
cated teachers are not necessarily narrow and mechanical, although, no doubt, rigid time-tables, strict payment by mechanical results, and hurried and mechanical inspections have had, and perhaps still have, a tendency to make teachers who- have been trained to teach well, teach ill. "But many certificated teachers are, as a matter of fact, mechani- cal." True, but what is the reason ? The reason is- not that they have been over-trained, but that they have been under- trained. They have not had leisure or opportunity, in many cases, to go to the roots of the subjects which they teach. Many teach arithmetic without a very deep knowledge of algebra, many teach English grammar without much acquaintance with philology and the grammar of other languages, and the consequence is that their teaching of these subjects is sometimes undoubtedly mechanical and unprogressive. But how is this undoubted defect to be remedied? Surely not by giving them less training, but by giving them more knowledge. Just compare the money and time and educational opportunities at the disposal of an Oxford or Cambridge man preparing for the work of a teacher with those of a certificated master, and it will be at once evident how unfair it must be to expect that the certificated master should teach as freshly and progressively as the University man. Put the Uni- versity man and the certificated master over two parallel classes, and watch the result. The certificated master will produce the best results at first, the University man will start a long way behind and will gain on his rival, and in four or five years, by the time he has intellectually damaged, say, fifty pupils, and intellectually ruined, say, only five, he will perhaps have overtaken and passed him. But what is the inference from all this ? The inference of most people seems to be that the certificated master teaches badly because he has been trained to teach, and that the University man teaches better because he has not been trained to teach. My inference, on the other hand, is that the certificated master beats the University man at first, and is beaten by him at last, because the former has been trained to teach, but not to know, while the latter has been trained to know, but not to teach. And my practical conclusion is that the certificated master ought to be trained to know, and that the University man ought to be trained to teach.
I submit that a priori my conclusion is far the more reasonable
of the two. But I could easily add facts to support my opinion. Where certificated masters happen to have extended their studies so far as to take a degree at one of the Universities, their teaching has been as progressive and unmechanical as that of University men, and, moreover, they have taught well, without gaining their experience, as University men mostly do, at the expense of their pupils.
Let me point out that the position of middle-class education is just now extremely critical. No one knows how bad it is. There are no inspectors of middle-class private schools. The Local Examinations of Oxford and Cambridge only test a very small number of the pupils from the best schools. But the worst schools, and the great mass of moderately bad schools, do not send any pupils at all to these examinations. Undisturbed, untested, and prosperous, the great bulk of middle-class private schools pursues its uninterrupted task of preparing the children of middle- class parents for a life of business, by teaching them to study many things and know nothing, and by turning thousands after thousands of pupils year by year into the competition of modern life, to be jostled aside in offices and counting-houses by Germans, who have been taught to know. In this wretched system the teachers of really good private schools have no encouragement to teach well, and the parents of the lower middle-class—often uneducated themselves, and occupied from morning to night— have absolutely no means of distinguishing good schools from bad. "I sent him to the dearest school I could find in our neighbourhood," is the apologetic remark over and over again made to me, when at an entrance examination I expostulate with parents who bring up a boy of thirteen or fourteen who has been taught French, Latin, and geometry, and knows literally worse than nothing,—unable to spell, or reason, or think, or even to do an ordinary multiplication sum. I confess I am often silenced by this pitiful explanation. All the reply that I can make is to point to the wretched results, and to urge that the boy's education must begin over again. But I am met with a sorrowful shake of the head, "it is too late now." And it is too late. Quack teaching is, at all events in this one respect, more mischievous than quack medicine,—the failure of the quack physician can often be detected in a few weeks, but quack teaching is generally not detected till years have passed away, and the pupil is intellectually ruined.
Lest my readers should suppose that these remarks are exag- gerated, or based on insufficient data, I will state the source of my experience. During the last eleven or twelve years I have conducted -weekly examinations of boys (about seven a week) drawn in the majority of eases from middle-class private schools, and I have been in the habit of tabulating the results of these ex- aminations, together with some of the answers. My impression is that the results are deteriorating, but in any case I have no -doubt at all that, relatively to the public elementary schools, the middle-class private schools are retrograding. Not one boy in three, over thirteen years of age, seems up to the mark of a bright lad from a public elementary school.
I believe that all those who are conversant with this class of schools would endorse the truth of what I say. The standard of the examinations of the College of Preceptors is by no means high ; to an inexperienced reader, the papers would probably seem absurdly easy. But I understand that they have great difficulty in keeping the schools even up to their very moderate standard, and the College is at this moment on the point of appealing to the Universities to do something to facilitate the training of teachers. Let me -add the• experience of one of the very ablest head masters of "our public schools. At a recent examina- tion of boys in one of the largest of our manufacturing towns in the North of England, he had before him thirty-eight boys be- tween the ages of fourteen and sixteen ; and "I asked them," he said, "whether four-thirds is greater or less than one, and gave them five minutes to think of it? Not one of the thirty-eight -could answer the question." Such a state of things speaks for itself.
I have no space to meet the "third assumption" mentioned above, or to show how radically the proposed training or testing of our higher teachers would probably differ from the present system of training certificated masters. Let me say, however, that the general opinion of the head masters of endowed schools is de- cidedly in favour of the training of our higher teachers. I know only two really able teachers (one no longer a teacher) who dis- sent from this opinion, and at the present moment the Committee of head masters of endowed schools has received instructions (imposed upon them by a unanimous resolution of the con-
ference which lately met at Rugby), to take such steps as they may deem advisable to organise a system of training for teachers of schools above the rank of elementary.—I am, Sir, &e.,
[We have always favoured the technical training of teachers as teachers, so far as it does not abridge materially the opportunity for wide and liberal study. Our position has been only this,—
(1) that it would be quite premature at present to limit the masterships in endowed schools to regularly trained teachers ; and (2) that if you have, and while you have, to choose between men of wide knowledge inadequately trained to teach, and accomplished teachers of a much narrower range of knowledge, we should prefer the former to the latter.—En. Spectator.]
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